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Bug 23831 - add HMAC-SHA1 to the list of recommended algorithms
Summary: add HMAC-SHA1 to the list of recommended algorithms
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: Web Cryptography
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Web Cryptography API Document (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: PC All
: P2 normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Ryan Sleevi
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Reported: 2013-11-14 09:32 UTC by Mete Balci
Modified: 2014-01-28 00:14 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

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Description Mete Balci 2013-11-14 09:32:37 UTC
Copying what I wrote in the email to the mailing list:

"I believe the recommended algorithms section should include HMAC-SHA1 also. Because, at least, a widely used One Time Password (OTP) standard (I can provide references if needed but a well-known open source one is Google Authenticator, https://code.google.com/p/google-authenticator/) by OATH (http://www.openauthentication.org/) directly depends on it. (RFC 4226 and RFC6238)"
Comment 1 Alexey Proskuryakov 2013-11-16 06:59:22 UTC
Please don't take this as an objection - I'm no expert in cryptography - but perhaps this will be relevant: <https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/11/microsoft_retir.html>.
Comment 2 Ryan Sleevi 2013-11-16 15:06:04 UTC
(In reply to Alexey Proskuryakov from comment #1)
> Please don't take this as an objection - I'm no expert in cryptography - but
> perhaps this will be relevant:
> <https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/11/microsoft_retir.html>.

This is related to the use of SHA-1 as part of digital signatures. Retiring SHA-1 for this use case is a 'good thing', and is in line with NIST's algorithmic recommendations for the acceptable lifetime.

However, the use of [hash algorithm] with HMAC is a different security situation entirely. Attacks that undermine (some) of the properties of the hash do not necessarily apply to the HMAC construction that uses that hash. This is, for example, why HMAC-MD5 is not considered 'broken', even though MD5 itself is quite famously broken.

Given that Geoff Keating (geoffk@) at Apple has expressed some degree of support for Microsoft's move there, you can certainly chat with him to get a better view of Apple's cryptographic policies, and how they might affect implementations that rely on those system libraries - like WebKit (when used on OS X)
Comment 3 Mete Balci 2013-11-18 06:48:58 UTC
There is also RFC 6194 (Security Considerations for the SHA-0 and SHA-1 Message-Digest Algorithms) published in March 2011, saying in section 3.3: "As of today, there is no indication that attacks on SHA-1 can be extended to HMAC-SHA-1."

Related to OATH specs, there is a separate OCRA spec for challenge/response which can be interpreted as signing, but it uses HMAC-SHA256.
Comment 4 Mark Watson 2014-01-28 00:14:31 UTC
As discussed on 1/27 call, this is added to the recommended algorithms.

https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/webcrypto-api/rev/ff379c9139c3